Knight Ridder Newspapers

PIERCE CITY, Mo. – Flattened by tornadoes 2½ years ago, two southwest Missouri towns are back on their feet and crediting the same federal agency that took a beating after Hurricane Katrina.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency made a special project out of rebuilding Pierce City and Stockton after tornadoes on May 4, 2003, destroyed their downtown areas and damaged scores of homes.

FEMA gave a little more than $8 million in aid to Pierce City, Stockton and their residents and lent each city a recovery manager for 15 months. Stockton has a revitalized downtown, and Pierce City has a new City Hall, senior center and library, and will dedicate a new fire station and storm shelter on Dec. 17.

“I can’t say enough about what they did,” Stockton Mayor Ralph Steele said.

Hurricane Katrina was a different story for FEMA. The agency came under fire for slow evacuation and inadequate emergency shelters in New Orleans, although FEMA said evacuations were a state and local government duty.

FEMA also took heat for taking too long to deliver aid. Agency Director Michael Brown resigned under pressure two weeks after the late August hurricane.

But if Katrina exposed FEMA for what officials say it is not – a first responder to natural disasters – the Missouri tornadoes presented FEMA in its more customary role as a recovery agent. In short, the tornadoes showed what FEMA is good at, Steele and Pierce City Mayor Mark Peters said.

“It’s hard not to take some of the criticism they’ve received personally, because we had a pretty close association, and they did so good by us,” Peters said. “Tornadoes are in a lot of ways much easier to deal with (than hurricanes) because they are here and gone, and then you have to start picking up.”

The devastation was much smaller than what Katrina wrought, although the tornado wiped out 43 of Pierce City’s 45 businesses and damaged about 70 homes. The Stockton tornado destroyed about a third of the town’s businesses, damaged 400 homes and destroyed 80, and leveled thousands of mature trees. Three people died in Stockton, one in Pierce City.

Pierce City, with about 1,400 residents, was known for century-old downtown buildings and antique shops. Stockton, with a population of about 1,900, is the county seat of Cedar County and draws a lot of visitors to nearby Stockton Lake.

After the tornadoes, Brown visited Pierce City and Stockton. President Bush toured Pierce City a week after the twister and said: “We’re going to rebuild this city.”

FEMA put both towns in a special long-term recovery program that at the time had been used after only three other disasters – the 2001 World Trade Center attack; a 1999 flood in Princeville, N.C.; and wildfires of 2000 in New Mexico.

FEMA sent architects, engineers and planners to Pierce City and Stockton, in addition to assigning each a full-time recovery manager.

While the two towns were not eligible for any special FEMA money, the recovery managers helped them seek FEMA aid and federal Community Development Block Grants, and assisted private businesses in getting Small Business Administration loans.

“In the long run, they would have had to do all this themselves, and for small communities not used to applying to multiple federal agencies, it would have been very confusing and an intensive learning process,” said Dan Best, recovery branch chief for FEMA’s Kansas City region.

FEMA gave about $4.7 million in assistance to Pierce City, not counting employee time. The funds included $1.95 million to pay 75 percent of the cost – after insurance payments – of replacing buildings such as the City Hall, fire station, senior center, library and bandstand.

FEMA also paid $425,000 for sewer and water system repairs, $900,000 for debris removal, $300,000 to reimburse police for post-tornado security, $257,000 for road and bridge work, $68,000 for two new ball fields, and $783,000 to help affected residents with living expenses, property losses, medical bills and transportation costs.

“We would probably not be nearly as far along as we are today without them,” said Michelle Bacarisse, co-owner of a new Pierce City antique shop that moved into one of the few downtown buildings the tornado spared.

Bacarisse said FEMA’s commitment to Pierce City gave private businesses confidence to stay in town or to move there. While the town lost its historic look, most of the stores are in roomier, more efficient buildings, and the town has attracted some stores it didn’t have before, Peters said.

“In material terms,” Peters said, “I don’t think there is any doubt” Pierce City is better off than it was before the tornado.

Stockton got about $3.6 million in FEMA aid, including only $142,000 in construction costs because the tornado did very little damage to public buildings. FEMA spent $1.43 million on debris removal, $500,000 for security work, $967,000 for individual assistance, $157,000 for roads and bridges, and $335,000 for recreation facilities.

Community planners supplied by FEMA helped the town redesign its downtown square so there is a wider turning radius for large vehicles and room for green space. It is also helping the city apply for historic-preservation funds to restore a community building the tornado damaged.

“We sat across the table from one another; they told us what to do,” Steele said. “I believed them, and I accepted what they said.”

Most Stockton businesses have rebuilt, Steele said, and owners of the new brick buildings on the town square agreed to build them with a consistent architectural look.

“The first few months after the tornado, I thought, “We’ll never build back; it’s too much,”‘ Steele said. “I was proved wrong. It’s a lot better than I thought it would be.”

FEMA considered its oversight of the Stockton and Pierce City rebuilding successful, Best said, and put similar plans in place after hurricanes hit Florida and other areas last year and the Gulf Coast this year.